Bookkeeping functions:
Initialize the basic random number generator. Optional argument x can be any hashable object. If x is omitted or None, current system time is used; current system time is also used to initialize the generator when the module is first imported. If randomness sources are provided by the operating system, they are used instead of the system time (see theos.urandom() function for details on availability).
Changed in version 2.4: formerly, operating system resources were not used.
Return an object capturing the current internal state of the generator. This object can be passed to setstate() to restore the state.
New in version 2.1.
Changed in version 2.6: State values produced in Python 2.6 cannot be loaded into earlier versions.
state should have been obtained from a previous call to getstate(), and setstate() restores the internal state of the generator to what it was at the time setstate() was called.
New in version 2.1.
Change the internal state to one different from and likely far away from the current state. n is a non-negative integer which is used to scramble the current state vector. This is most useful in multi-threaded programs, in conjunction with multiple instances of the Random class: setstate() or seed() can be used to force all instances into the same internal state, and then jumpahead() can be used to force the instances’ states far apart.
New in version 2.1.
Changed in version 2.3: Instead of jumping to a specific state, n steps ahead, jumpahead(n) jumps to another state likely to be separated by many steps.
Returns a python long int with k random bits. This method is supplied with the MersenneTwister generator and some other generators may also provide it as an optional part of the API. When available, getrandbits() enables randrange() to handle arbitrarily large ranges.
New in version 2.4.
Functions for integers:
Return a randomly selected element from range(start, stop, step). This is equivalent to choice(range(start, stop, step)), but doesn’t actually build a range object.
New in version 1.5.2.
Functions for sequences:
Shuffle the sequence x in place. The optional argument random is a 0-argument function returning a random float in [0.0, 1.0); by default, this is the function random().
Note that for even rather small len(x), the total number of permutations of x is larger than the period of most random number generators; this implies that most permutations of a long sequence can never be generated.
Return a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population sequence. Used for random sampling without replacement.
New in version 2.3.
Returns a new list containing elements from the population while leaving the original population unchanged. The resulting list is in selection order so that all sub-slices will also be valid random samples. This allows raffle winners (the sample) to be partitioned into grand prize and second place winners (the subslices).
Members of the population need not be hashable or unique. If the population contains repeats, then each occurrence is a possible selection in the sample.
To choose a sample from a range of integers, use an xrange() object as an argument. This is especially fast and space efficient for sampling from a large population: sample(xrange(10000000), 60).
The following functions generate specific real-valued distributions. Function parameters are named after the corresponding variables in the distribution’s equation, as used in common mathematical practice; most of these equations can be found in any statistics text.
Return a random floating point number N such that a <= N <= b for a <= b and b <= N <= a for b < a.
The end-point value b may or may not be included in the range depending on floating-point rounding in the equation a + (b-a) * random().
Return a random floating point number N such that low <= N <= high and with the specified mode between those bounds. The lowand high bounds default to zero and one. The mode argument defaults to the midpoint between the bounds, giving a symmetric distribution.
New in version 2.6.
Alternative Generators:
Class that uses the os.urandom() function for generating random numbers from sources provided by the operating system. Not available on all systems. Does not rely on software state and sequences are not reproducible. Accordingly, the seed()and jumpahead() methods have no effect and are ignored. The getstate() and setstate() methods raise NotImplementedError if called.
New in version 2.4.
Examples of basic usage: